Update: original photo removed and replaced, by popular demand!
Germaine Greer, herself a short-lived former contestant on the UK version of Big Brother, has, as always, some diamond-bright words to say:
'Australia's prime minister, John Howard, sensing a heaven-sent opportunity to be seen leading the nation, provided the inevitable comment: "I think it is just a question of good taste. Here is a great opportunity for Channel Ten to do a bit of self-regulation and get this stupid programme off the air." As if. This pious hope was converted by the media into the PM "demanding a ban" on Big Brother. The tabloids pretended that they believed that Howard actually knew what he was talking about.
... Endemol Southern Star, which makes the BB series in Australia, had suffered a serious blow when its adults-only version of the show was taken off air, apparently, after complaints about "excessive nudity". Endemol does not respond to complaints from viewers; it was probably the advertisers who pulled the plug. A phony scandal of the sort provided by John, Camilla and Ashley was just what was needed to pump up viewing figures for the tamer version of the show.
... Last September, Big Brother was found to have breached broadcast standards for the massage footage. Network Ten responded by announcing that "this year's housemates will be taught how to avoid sexual harassment and bullying". Words, like everything else on Big Brother, are cheap.
... One of the mysteries of Big Brother is just how much money is made by telephone voting and who really gets it.
... When Pete was sexually harassed by a woman in the current series of British BB nobody thought it anything but funny. Nobody seems to regard the British women's unremitting sexual display as harassment of the men (who seem, it must be said, unmoved). Meanwhile, much is made of the vulnerability of certain of the housemates who are thought to be mentally ill, when in fact all the housemates are being driven crazy.'
Read the whole excellent thing here. And, since we live in a world where one must look good in order to be heard -- is this some diseased form of synaesthesia? -- here's Greer in her prime.
8 comments:
That's one of the worst photos I've ever seen of GG! She looks awful. But maybe that's more to do with who she's trying to be.
Do you think? I guess one's imprints of what looks good are hard-wired by one's age, at least to some extent. Maybe I'd better find another photo!
... there you go, &D, is that better? It's certainly less, erm, stylistically indicative of its era ...
thanks for the kind words over at LP, dood.
yeah. Shucks, you didn't have to do that just for me! But she does look a lot better here. Not a bad old chook, GG. Has her mad moments, of course.
She's a stunner either way. The other photo was pretty good. Not everyone managed to come out of 1972 looking so good.
Why is it sometimes with blogspot blogs I go and visit them every day and see no new posts, and then suddenly on day 4 or 5 there's a whole heap of posts timestamped for those very days I came and saw nothing new?
Why?
Anyway, luv Germaine. Every now and then she goes off half cocked, but mostly she's sharpsharpsharp.
I thought the first half was neatly put but a bit distant, with the faint air of a pile of articles from a manila folder put next to her typewriter. That is probably unjust, and she googled furiously to get the background.
When she moved on to talk about the British BB, the article got much better. After all, she has direct experience of a variant of the thing herself, and it added zest to her words.
- barista
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